Milwaukee Bucks: 3 lessons to learn from this year’s NBA Playoffs

Milwaukee Bucks: 3 lessons to learn from this year’s NBA Playoffs – The value of shooting

Let it fly has been the three most commonly used words in Milwaukee over the Mike Budenholzer era.

The Bucks have been at the forefront of consistently putting up threes over the last two seasons. The benefits of doing that have been two-fold that goes beyond just meeting the requirements of competing in the modern NBA as it has opened up the paint for the likes of Antetokounmpo, Bledsoe and the Bucks’ downhill attackers.

But for all the floor spacing they have generated and the high-volume of looks the Bucks have launched up on a nightly basis, their efficiency on such shots is firmly average. The Bucks hit 35.5 percent of their threes this season, a slight uptick on the 35.3 percent they shot for the 2018-19 campaign.

At this point, it’s not enough for the Bucks to let it fly and live with the results. Opposing teams are more than prepared to let the Bucks’ floor spacers shoot away from three in order to maintain the walls that have gradually slowed down Antetokounmpo in each of the last two playoffs in particular.

Just as is the case with bolstering their playmaking options,, adding more efficient marksmen is crucial for the Bucks to maximize their offensive potency and reach the next level.

Now the team that took down the Bucks in the Conference Semifinals, the Heat, are a very tough team to emulate in this regard, given the fact that they compiled the second-highest 3-point percentage this season behind the league-leading Utah Jazz. The fact that they arguably have the best shooter in the league in Duncan Robinson and found him off the scrap heap may be the epitome of finding lightning in a bottle.

What’s more interesting is that the top two finalists in the West, the Lakers and the Nuggets, shot 34.9 percent and 35.9 percent from long range this season, respectively. While those are average shooting teams at best, it certainly helps to have the kind of high-level, versatile shot creators both teams are led by. Which brings us to our final point…